MORE than three quarters of nurseries, pre-schools and childminders in Cheshire East are providing good or outstanding care for young children.

Ofsted carried out inspections of 46 early years providers in Cheshire East between the beginning of April and the end of June this year, with two establishments being judged as outstanding.

Some 33 providers were classed as good, with nine being satisfactory and requiring improvement and two being deemed as inadequate.

An Ofsted spokesperson said: “It is now almost a year since we raised standards for nurseries and other early years providers, so it is heartening that these statistics show that almost three-quarters of our inspections found a good or outstanding service for young children in the north west.

“Parents can be assured that young children at those provisions are in an environment where they can learn and develop.

“However, there are still too many early years provisions which do not help young children be ready to learn when they start school.

“In coming months Ofsted will be working with the providers which need to improve.”

Between April 1 and June 30 Ofsted carried out 4,952 inspections of national childcare provision, and 4,177 of these spot checks were full inspections of providers on the Early Years Register.

Seventy four per cent of these inspections resulted in judgements of good or outstanding for overall effectiveness.

On November 4 last year, Ofsted introduced a revised early years framework which saw the judgement of satisfactory replaced with requires improvement.

Of the 4,177 full inspections carried out across the country during the three month period, 18 per cent resulted in a judgement of requires improvement.